In the arena, Donatello-Metalhead keeps the Foot Mutants
at bay with his armaments while the other Turtles rally. Splinter tells his sons to use strategy and skill
to counter the wild fury of their enemy.
Splinter then begins to meditate, searching the astral plane of his
memories to find a means to defeat the Shredder.

Feudal Japan.
Oroku Saki tracks Hamato Yoshi down and orders the execution of him and
his sons. He tells Yoshi that he has
betrayed the Foot Clan, though Yoshi begs for his sons to be spared. Saki says that when they were the same age,
they joined the Foot Clan willingly and were aware of the consequences. As such, Yoshi’s sons are just as guilty as
he is and must share his fate.

The present. On
Burnow Island, the Fugitoid and Harold accept the ooze from the scaly,
reptilian stranger and infuse it into the healing chamber containing
Donatello’s body.

Feudal Japan. Saki
catches Yoshi meditating in the dojo and admonishes him for wasting time praying
when he should be taking action against their enemies. Yoshi
claims that their masters Masato and Maji would disagree, having instilled in
them lessons on both inner strength and physical strength.

The present. In
the arena, Raphael and Michelangelo discover that they’ll never be able to make
a dent in Bebop and Rocksteady on their own, as the only things powerful enough
to hurt Bebop and Rocksteady… are Bebop and Rocksteady. Realizing this, the two Turtles lure the
mutants in close and strategically dodge their attacks, causing the imbeciles
to hit each other over and over. As for
Leonardo, he’s taking on Koya, who has been striking him from the air. Leo manages to slice her in the wings,
permanently grounding her. Bludgeon,
distracted by Koya’s screaming, becomes easy prey for Donatello, who uses his
headlights to blind the shark’s sensitive eyes.

On the sidelines, Kitsune continues weaving her invisible
spell over Alopex, informing her that when the dust settles, it will be the
foxes who claim the spoils, not the victors.
Nobody notices something wrong with Alopex and tries to snap her out of it.

Bludgeon and Koya are taken out of the battle, though Leo
and Don spare their lives. Bebop and
Rocksteady are still going, though, and seem to have wised up to Mike and Raph’s
tactics. Suddenly, Donatello gets a
message from the Fugitoid. He
acknowledges and tells his brothers to stand back. He then closes in on the mutants and
activates his self-destruct. The explosion
knocks the bad guys down and when the dust clears, the real live Donatello
teleports in. He then uses his new metal
staff to knock Bebop and Rocksteady unconscious.

Splinter is overjoyed to see his son well again. With the first round over, Shredder takes the battle to
the roof of Foot HQ where he will face the Turtles alone in combat. Leonardo and Donatello are the first to
attack. They land blows, but the
Shredder ultimately knocks them down, mocking Leonardo as the failed chunin and likewise mocking Donatello for his failure to deceive the Foot Clan.
Splinter, on the sidelines, continues to meditate.

Feudal Japan. A
young Saki and Yoshi spar on a log spanning a creek. Master Masato warns Yoshi that his anger will
get the better of him and also warns Saki not to be too eager to exploit an
enemy’s weakness. Both children attack one another fall
into the creek.

The present.
Locking weapons with Raphael, Shredder offers him a place in the Foot
Clan. Of course, Raph refuses, and is
knocked down. Michelangelo strikes,
having finally snapped with anger, but he too is defeated.

Feudal Japan. A
very young Saki gets into a brawl with another student at the dojo. Yoshi pulls him off and asks why he attacked
the boy. Saki explains that the boy is a
bully who claims to be the strongest student in the dojo; by defeating him, he
has proven that HE is the strongest.
Yoshi tells him that there’s more to strength than power, but knowing
when to pick your battles. Saki
thinks Yoshi is challenging him, but Yoshi declines to fight. He does, however, remind Saki that he’s not
intimidated by him.

The present. With the second round over, it is now time for Splinter
and Shredder to face each other.
Splinter awakens from his meditation, having found the answers he sought
for, and arms himself with Donatello’s staff.
He and Shredder battle and throughout the fight, Splinter grabs the
weapons of his sons and lands blows on Shredder in their honor.

Shredder lays a dire cut on Splinter and the pair trade
barbs about the nature of power, strength and duty. Splinter tells Shredder that his mistake is
thinking that he can find weaknesses to exploit in any enemy, including death-itself. No
one can conquer death forever, he reminds him, and grabbing Leo’s katana, he
lands a mortal wound across Shredder’s chest.
Shredder falls to his knees, defeated.

Saki accuses Yoshi of having turned his back on him long
ago and thus setting into motion both their miseries. Yoshi tells him that they were once
friends and he never turned his back on those memories, but on what Saki had
ultimately become later in life. Yoshi
offers Saki the opportunity to die with honor and Saki, removing his gauntlet,
assumes the position to commit seppuku.

Saki tells Karai that he has always valued her loyalty
and strength, and any discipline he gave her were simply a means to make her
stronger. He then turns to Kitsune and
tells her that death is just another path and he will someday find the one that
leads him back to her. Finally, he tells
Yoshi that he will see him again in the forest where they played as children. Splinter reconciles their brotherhood and, as
Saki stabs himself in the stomach with his gauntlet, he decapitates him.

With the battle over, Karai tells Splinter that she
cannot take the role of Master of the Foot Clan, even though as chunin it is her
right. She says she still has much to
learn from the past and must return to Japan. She
offers Splinter the honor of Master and he accepts it.
Michelangelo, having gone through far too much, has a breakdown. He drops his weapons and runs away, saying he
no longer wants to be a part of any of this. Splinter allows his son to leave so he can find his own answers, but tells Kitsune to stay so he
can keep an eye on her (an order she seems to like). Splinter then picks up Shredder's discarded helmet and looks into it.

Feudal Japan. Saki
and Yoshi are little boys, playing in the forest together without a care in the
world. Laughing, they both hope to someday
become great warriors.

The present.
Overlooking the city, Splinter tells his remaining sons, Nobody and Alopex that now it is
time for them to embrace their own destinies.

Feudal Japan. As
Saki and the Foot Clan abandon the bodies of Yoshi and his sons to rot in the
field, General Krang (in the guise of the Iron Demon) overlooks the chaos from
afar. He orders another Utrom,
Lieutenant Sulfurch, to contact Chief Science Officer Ma’Riell to collect DNA
samples from the deceased. He figures
that if the dead were so important to Saki, then he could use them to his
advantage, someday.

Waltz and Curnow have long said that they originally
plotted out their story arcs to fifty issues, so even twenty-five issues ago,
we knew that #50 was going to be the culmination of all their
storytelling. Not a conclusion, because
the book would continue on, but the end of perhaps a First Act, so to speak.

I will say that this issue felt pretty damn big and
pretty damn satisfying. While the
double-length wasn’t exactly what I’d define as a “bonus” (the issue was also
double-price, so we didn’t get those extra pages for free or even at a
discount), it certainly gave the physical copy this feeling of importance. Even before I read the comic, I felt like I
was holding something consequential in my hands.

Now, to talk about the “Vengeance” arc as a whole, I’ll
be a bit of a bummer and say that I think maybe it went a little too long. I really enjoyed the 4-part “Attack on
Technodrome”, but at 6 issues (8, if you count the Free Comic Book Day special
and this issue being double-length), “Vengance” felt bloated and at times
strung along. There were large patches
of repetition from the previous “Technodrome” storyline
(fighting Mousers and Flyborgs… again) that came across a bit like filler. In fact, most of the stuff with Baxter
Stockman probably could have been excised for the arc’s benefit.

Ideally, I think a more character-oriented two-parter
in-between “Technodrome” and “Vengeance” would have been preferable; maybe even
something to spotlight Donatello dealing with being trapped in Metalhead’s
body. As it ultimately ended up,
Donatello adapted to being a robot way too easily. And when read altogether, “Vengeance” only
spans a day or two (most of it takes place on the same night), so Don wasn’t stuck that way for very long.

Really, it feels like the meat and potatoes of “Vengeance”
are right here, in this issue.
Everything in the arc leading up to #50 was at best, fun, and at worst,
filler. The entire arc was gorgeously
drawn by Smith and Santolouco and there was never a feeling of corner-cutting,
so I don’t want it to sound like I hated the arc or anything. It certainly felt BIG and for what it was
intended to accomplish, that was definitely a vital priority.

Now, with #50 being the loadbearing member of the arc and
the climax of four years of storytelling, does it pull its weight and get the
job done?

Oh yeah, it does.

Waltz, Curnow and Eastman (to whatever extent his
contributions are) pull together a LOT of what they’d been doing over the past
49 issues plus miniseries. However, it’s
not so much through references to issue numbers, but in the details we’ve
learned about characters over all this time.

The big focus is, of course, on Shredder and
Splinter. We’ve learned a lot about them
in all the issues taking place in Feudal Japan and those works (which had major
contributions from Erik Burnham) form the emotional backbone of this
chapter. It’s a reminder of the various
ways the writers turned the Saki/Yoshi back story on its head, recalling the
rather tragic pre-destiny of Saki and the hotheaded irrationality of the young
Yoshi. We get to see once more how different
they were in their younger days, as Saki was the one folks were rooting for to
overcome his reincarnated fate and Yoshi was the one on the verge of
self-destructive anger.

The backward momentum of the flashbacks was another nice
touch, starting at the despicable outcome of Saki’s and Yoshi’s relationship,
then incrementally dialing back to the days when they were genuine friends with
hopes and dreams. By the time we get
there, the present-day battle is over and we’re ready for Shredder’s
more-or-less redemption. And you buy it;
that Shredder could be deserving of the chance to die with honor and reconcile
with his former brother. The flashbacks
are distributed strategically and the issue is paced so well that everything
works in tandem to gradually alter your perception of the characters.

And going back to “turning things on their heads”, when
offered the chance to commit seppuku, Shredder takes it. It was a nice throwback to the original
Mirage TMNT #1, when the Turtles gave him the same opportunity and he chose to
die dishonorably, instead. But IDW
Shredder is a very different character from Mirage Shredder (who was barely a
character to begin with) and the opposite outcome we see here feels organic to
this incarnation.

As for the fights, there’s blessedly little of the “villain
decay” phenmomenon and I’m grateful for it.
The writers (all of them) don’t forget that they’d established Bebop and
Rocksteady as being practically invulnerable and their defeat is a hard-won
victory for the Turtles. I loved the
throwbacks to the old cartoon, with them hitting each other (especially when
they ram into one another in homage to their first appearance in the cartoon),
but the humor never diminishes their threat.
The Turtles have to really WORK to take them down and Donatello
ultimately gets his revenge with the final blow.

The fight between the Turtles and Shredder here sort of
redeems how disappointing their first encounter was way back in TMNT #12, where
Shredder went down like a punk. Either
he’s gotten stronger or they’ve gotten weaker, but whatever the case may be, he
puts up a MUCH better fight than the first time. Yet, he’s still not portrayed as untouchable
(ala the Nickelodeon Shredder) and takes plenty of blows from the Turtles
before knocking them down. It’s a nice
compromise; he still beats them because he’s better, but he isn’t a hundred
miles out of their league or anything.

The final round between Splinter and Shredder is a
surprisingly bloody affair, at least for this book (which mostly avoids the red
stuff). While not as gory as it could
be, it finds a decent middle-ground and the various cuts traded between foes look
appropriately devastating. And in the
end, it’s what they don’t show that makes the presentation feel more tasteful
and dramatic. Splinter cuts Shredder’s
head off, but we don’t see a fountain of gore spewing from the stump; instead, we see the cut and then how the
characters react to it. I found that far more effective.

Of course, for as much an ending as #50 is, it is every
bit a setup for the next Act of IDW’s TMNT series. Kitsune is up to something with Alopex,
Michelangelo is having a breakdown, Leatherhead is about to show up as more
than just an arm and a tail, Karai is off finding herself in Japan, Splinter
now leads the Foot Clan, and what the HECK was that stuff with General Krang
collecting the DNA of Yoshi and his sons all about?

We’ve reached the end of an era, but we’ve already
started a new one, so there’s no need for tears.

On the art front, I’m running out of ways to compliment
Santolouco, but since he won’t be the main artist on the book after this, I
might as well get it out of my system.

This is maybe his most gorgeous issue to date and it is
just exploding with kinetic energy. I
positively love that first two-page spread, particularly the wide panel at the
top. You can sit there and inspect every
inch of it and follow what the characters are doing in the fight, from
Donatello zipping across the floor and leaving behind a trail of smoke to Koya
dodging a flurry of shuriken being hurled at her by Leonardo. It’s phenomenal stuff.

And there are so many panels, too! It takes a while to go through each page, as
even the spreads have a bevy of sequential work to them for you to digest. Santolouco’s style has that “cinematic”
look to it, but doesn’t forget that this is still a COMIC and not a movie, so
he still draws for the medium he’s working in.
So many artists today want to go for that “cinematic” look and give us
splash pages and spreads and it feels like I’m looking at storyboards for a
movie, not reading a comic book.
Seriously, Image. Knock it off.

But something even more impressive needs to be pointed
out, and that’s how harmonious the trio of Santolouco, Smith and Pattison work
together. The pencils for “Vengeance”
was handled by both Santolouco and Smith, with both providing pages for this
final issue. Their styles have their own
unique flavor and details, but ultimately blend together really well. You don’t get that distracting gear-shift
feeling as you go from one chapter to another and immediately notice that it
looks totally different. And I’m sure
Pattison’s lush coloring work is also a large part in synchronizing the
pencils so that everything tessellates perfectly in the end.

Was the “Vengeance” arc flawless? No, it had its problems which I mostly summarized
at the start of the review. Much like
Dark Leo in “City Fall”, the Donatello-Metalhead thing didn’t hit the
mark. What should have been a big
character struggle was overshadowed by the epic event status of the
storyline. That and the inflated length
of the arc were my only qualms, though.

I think, here in the final stretch, “Vengeance” felt
pretty damn good. And it certainly
looked REALLY damn good. I’m sure if I
ruminate on it some more, I may find other little foibles here and there (the
Foot Clan is out of the picture, but were they really such a bother up until now?),
but I’d rather reflect on what I enjoyed over what I disliked.

With both the Foot and Krang down for the count, there’s
a lot of open territory for the IDW series to explore as they go forward. And hey, they’re keeping the numbering! For now, anyway. Cross your fingers and maybe we’ll finally
get a TMNT series that makes it to #100.
We can dream.

Grade: A (as in, “And Santolouco stopped drawing
Mikey with big buck teeth! A shame he
waited until his last issue, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth”.)

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The art was so good in this issue it felt like I was watching an animated movie or cartoon rather than looking at static images. There's definitely something about the art especially during the fight scenes...it almost feels like its moving. I felt like I was watching an animated movie or something during the Shredder fights.

Makes you wish Nick would actually adapt the IDW comics into direct-to-DVD movies or something. Would love to see this stuff actually animated with voice work and everything.

I'm so excited about the future of this comic. I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that they'd turn Splinter into a tragic villain, but here we are -- Splinter has replaced Shredder as Jonin of the Foot Clan through what I can only assume are the machinations of Kitsune and her allies, and will almost surely start to spin out of control from psychological torment and a lust for power. Mikey senses this and has fled the Turtles for safe harbor... he'll probably join the Mutanimals. The comic has beaten us over the head with the fact that Alopex is under Kitsune's control, and I'm willing to bet that the Rat King has a firm grip over Splinter's will. I expect that Splinter and Alopex will secretly vie for influence over the remaining Turtles, and things will come to a head when one of them goes too far. The writers could take this plot in any direction they choose... I hope they're brave enough to make decisions that continue to shock readers, like Donatello's "death" or Shredder's seppuku.

Also, I'm hoping that the next few issues will be more character driven and will focus on developing characters that haven't been explored much in the first 50 issues. I see a lot of opportunities now for the comic to instill more depth into Mikey, Nobody, and Alopex. These three characters are rather shallow at the moment... Mikey up until now has basically been comic relief, the one source of stability in an otherwise tumultuous band of brothers. Nobody's background is interesting, but beyond the Purple Dragon stuff, we really don't care much about Angel as a character.

And Alopex is so devoid of character development that she might as well be Mona Lisa. With the amount of attention the comic gives her and how important she is to the story, she really needs a lot more motivation than just "Shredder burned down a forest and now I want revenge. Especially since Shredder is now dead. The writers really have to throw us a curveball with regards to Alopex for her to be a compelling character. And please don't waste 100 pages on a RaphaelXAlopex romance. Angsty, love-smitten Raphael is about as tired a trope in this franchise as Mirage-era Splinter... I'd hate for him to become that, and I'd hate for Alopex to become Ninjara.

I think the thing with General Krang collecting samples on Yoshi and his sons will be less of a set up for a future plot point and more of a retroactive explanation for how their souls ended up in the bodies that they have now. After IDW threw the whole reincarnation thing at us, we now know the details of how Shredder managed to be revived in modern times, but the question of how Yoshi and his sons were reincarnated into the Turtles and Splinter was never addressed. They just did. Maybe this is sort of the explanation for it (or at least the base of it); their DNA was used in the psychoserum and terrapin armor experiments.

I saw the Krang stuff at the end as retconning the "reincarnation" of the family. Like Krang gave Stockman the DNA hundreds of years later and that's why the turtles and Splinter were reborn. Seemed like a nice bookend for the first run -- bringing it all back to the beginning and showing how everything tied together.

Like the commentators above, I think the end, with Krang sampling the DNA, is a nod to the origin explained at the beginning of the series. A nice way to come full circle. It also means Krang himself is responsible for the very existence of the Turtles and Splinter, much like he was in the Fred Wolf cartoon, by providing Shredder with the mutagen ooze.

IDW put together a great book, combining the best elements of all previous (and current) incarnations of the TMNT. There's still so much story to be told and the book's already halfway in becoming the longest running TMNT comic title... Can't wait to see what's around the bend!

I am so overjoyed to have Donnie back ! The 2012 Donnie should have a metal staff. I also have two theories why Krang took the samples.1. He used the DNA to reincarnate Splinter and the Turtles2. He could use the samples to create evil versions of themI honestly thought that this arc was great and something similar should be used in the 2012 cartoon. Hopefully Splinter will turn the Foot Clan onto the path of good and find Mikey. I had no idea why he broke down and ran off but the next arc is obvious. Operation: Find Michelangelo is time. I can't wait!